Tuning Chamber

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Transcript of Tuning Chamber

Thank You!What is the Tuning Chamber?A close up of the cavity of the chamber & the subwoofer. Here a soundscape combining pure frequencies ranging from 120 Hz to 160hz are amplified, springing from floor to ceiling. Passing through the participants body hearing and feeling the waves. The structure is composed of cherry and birch. The hexagonal cylinder is designed like a vacuum, oscillating the tones for optimal relational bodily conversation. Communing with Invisible Landscapes

Tuning ChamberThe Tuning Chamber is an experience where you bio-rhythmically retune the cacophony of the city by integrating with the sound waves of the oscillating pod. The experience is achieved by using a combination of Ganzfeld sensory deprivation techniques and your voice to activate the body and interact with the reverberating frequencies. The dual chambers of your bodies cavity and that of the pod elicit a range of psycho-acoustic phenomena and vibratory journeys facilitating entrances into non-ordinary states of consciousness.

Four adjustable LED lights are aimed at eye level. Frosted goggles are worn by participants diffusing the lights.This creates perceptual deprivation, shutting down the primary vision to produce a higher sensitivity through our other sensory organs.

A stereo and mp3 player looping the chambers soundscape amplify and power the subwoofer.A 3 inch hollow space at the base of the chamber, magnifies the resonance giving a slight sensation of floatation through vibrations . By immersing the body in a bath of frequencies, sensory deprivation and vocal communion, a non-ordinary state of consciousness is evoked. This nourishes each participant with a variety of experiential possibilities. How did this idea evolve?This idea came from a series of inquiries, primary and secondary research, interviews and experiments that I have conducted over the last several years while investigation the topic of consciousness and sound. During this time I built many sensory sound works. The first of which was a piece called the Altered State Hood.After the hood came several more portable experiences until the creation of the sound coffin. The Sound Coffin was inspired by the story of my friend, a Brazilian witch, who at the age of twelve was put through an initiation during which she was buried in the ground for 24 hours with only a tube for air. This process took place in order for her to connect to her spirit guides and gain access to non-visible realms and their inhabitants. The use of sensory deprivation to heighten and induce non-ordinary states of consciousness has been noted in ancient texts that explore Greek oracular cults most notably the Oracle of Delphi. In addition with the advent of acoustic archeology not only does the sensory-deprived aspect of the cave help induce these states but the acoustical properties of the caves physical make-up further stimulates these states through sound. Second incarnation of the sound coffin used during a performance at Silent Barn. Sound Coffin prototypeThe sound coffin and other works helped me to establish parameters creating a set (intention/expectation) and a setting (environment). Catalyzing individuals from their baseline (ordinary) state into that of a non-ordinary state. These alterations create changes in emotions, perceptions, sensations, senses of time & space as well as our sense of body image and identity. During the production of these works I conducted numerous experiments first on myself and then on dozens of volunteers until finding the sound/space combination that best fit the specific intent of the piece.

I use a variety of referential charts that correlate the neurological, psychological and physiological responses to the sound frequencies as a template to have more control in reaching the desired effects and/or destination.

Though there is a systemized sense to aspects of these projects many findings are a result of chance, spontaniety and unending curiousities. This methodology and creating the work as art not science allows unending possibilities and freedoms that the scientific method would not permit. A personal preference as I often find the world of mainstream sciences limited with its need for proofs, quantification and centralization on materialist ideology. Dismissing anything that does not line up to its conventionally packaged history. While art remains far more open as cumulative historical stew inviting ideas to weave its past, present and future.

A ganzfeld experiment (from the German for “entire field”) is a technique used in the field of parapsychology to test individuals for extrasensory perception (ESP). It uses homogeneous and unpatterned sensory stimulation to produce an effect similar to sensory deprivation.[1] The deprivation of patterned sensory input is said to be conducive to inwardly generated impressions.[2] The technique was devised by Wolfgang Metzger in the 1930s as part of his investigation into the gestalt theory.[3]

Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin and Daryl Bem say that ganzfeld experiments have yielded results that deviate from randomness to a significant degree, and that these results present some of the strongest quantifiable evidence for telepathy to date.

Temporary Agency est. 2014 is a nomadic collective initiated and operated by artists Natalee Cayton, Kiran Chandra, Dominika Ksel and Amanda Turner Pohan. Temporary Agency hosts exhibitions, screenings, lectures, performances and ideas outside of general institutional and capitalist ideologies, collaborating with artists and community members to nurture forums for education, information and creativity. In 2015, we initiated Temporary Agency Publishing.

Shores of the Abyss: ChambersCollaborative installation with the Yams. Here, are 7 hexagonal chambers, which each a unique piece of audio. 5 of the chambers were sonic compositions, 1 was a poem and another a meditation. The chambers created a symphony in the space and individual containers of sound could not be distinguised until one reached a close proximity. Participants were immersed in total darkness with haunting often abstracted sounds echoing a parallel to this fraught and dehumanizing history.

"Two spheres meet in this first installation the material and immaterial worlds of representation. The Shores of the Abyss, is inspired by the Martinican philosopher and poet Edouard Glissant’s first chapter in Poetics of Relation, in which Glissant describes the experience of the middle passage through the trope of the Open Boat as an experience of Abyss. The Abyss is the non-place of the ocean, the non-time of the boat and the heterotopia of existence. This installation is less concerned with the notion of the middle passage than with exploring the notion of the non-world and contact zones of difference drawing on the postcolonial theorist Marie-Louis Pratts conecpt, which attempts to pour out of the institutional framing, like sand out of the walls and open a space of encounter. The flotsam on this shore remain the instruments of domestication and regulation, long forgotten and (mostly) out of use, they are, nevertheless, the remnants of a past that undergirds our presences. This shore is a contact zone between the past and present in which we reconnect with our futures."CuratorsChrista Bell (YAMS co-founder) & Nana Adusei Poku

Metaphysics of the Skin are stroboscopic goggles that are synced to a combination of delta, theta, beta and alpha tones. As the participant merges deeper into this sensory overload geometric patterns, people and places appear like a cognitive film often mimicking patterns and drawings found in pre-historic arts perhaps giving insight into a blueprint of early conciousness and its penetration into our collective DNA.